WTF?

On Thursday I participated in what was known as the WTF Day, or in other words, the "Where's the Food...Without the Farmer Day. There is an organization called I Love Farmers...They Feed My Soul founded at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo from a group of agriculture students (some of whom I've known from FFA or MJC) and they wanted to plan a national event on multiple college campuses promoting the American farmer.

When I found out Kansas State wanted to participate I wanted to help. When I was at Cal Poly, I felt bad that I never really helped out with the organization except once at the World Ag Expo, but I always felt guilty for not doing more.

We had two groups of students, one group was in front of the student union, the other in front of the agriculture building. I think for next year we should just concentrate everyone in one location, because I think it shows strength in numbers.

Overall it was a good day, although we may have not gotten the amount of media coverage that we wanted, we still reached a lot of people on campus. And that, in the end, is the most important thing.

Manhattan, KS: A little slice of Americana

So I know it has been a couple weeks since this event took place, but I want to talk a bit about the K-State homecoming parade. I stumbled upon this by accident (I was doing some shopping in the town center when I walked out and saw a parade going down Poyntz). I was pleasantly surprised.

I guess coming from a place like Modesto, CA, I have gotten used to parades being a thing of the past. When I was a kid, the 4th of July parade was a HUGE deal. I remember getting up at 8 am and sitting downtown with my family waiting for the parade to start. Over the past couple years, support for that parade back home has been dwindling, and they have barely made it work. What started off as a two hour or longer event is now only around an hour if we are lucky.

That's what I love about this place: it still has pride and tradition. Maybe it's because of the fact it's a smaller town, but I don't believe that. I think that it has to do with the people.

If you walked around town, you would see this. People were helping other people paint displays on the main street.

I came out with some good pictures. This parade had everything: shriners, Smokey the bear, floats, bears in cars, old time-y cars and even a cow statue.

Even in Kansas there are still segways. How disappointing.

It was definitely a fun time, and it lasted longer than my 4th of July parade back home! I guess bigger cities just don't have that Americana that smaller towns do. It's funny because American Graffiti, one of the best movies about americana, is based in Modesto, CA.

Agriculture Future of America Conference

Last weekend, I went to the AFA conference in Kansas City, MO. AFA stands for Agriculture Future of America. First off let me say, this was in my top two best weekends I had since I moved to Kansas, the other being when my sister came to visit. I hadn't left Manhattan since May, so it was refreshing to get out of town and see someplace new.

I carpooled with a few other K-State students over to our hotel in Kansas City. It's interesting how many people I've met here that are either from the west or east coasts. I'm beginning to think this is a trend.

This conference was awesome, one of the best I've ever been to, and I've been to a lot of them. Not only were the speakers and workshops great, but I met a lot of people from all over the country.

I think my favorite part of the conference was the time I got to spend with the other people from Kansas State. Before this conference, I don't even think I said hello to them, which was terrible. That weekend I must've met 8-10 people from Kansas State that I never talked to, and it was great getting to know them. Above is a picture of a few of us with Orion Samuelson, a broadcast journalist for RFD-TV.

I also enjoyed the speakers and workshops. Our first speaker was Captain Charlie Plumb, a navy combat pilot from the Top Gun Academy who was captured in Vietnam and kept in a Vietnamese prison camp for years. We also had a woman named Jan Hargrave who was a body language expert teach us about how to read people. She even taught us how to read romantic body language, which I will make sure to remember.

There was also a career fair, where I met a lot of great industry professionals for internships. I found out I was paired with a company called ICM, which I later found out was a biofuels company. At first, I thought I would have nothing to say to these people because I knew hardly anything about ethanol, but it turns out their internship they offered was right up my alley.

All in all, it was a great conference. I learned some great things, met some great people and was re-engerized to come back and put these skills I learned to good use. It's something I'm definitely looking forward to next year and may even try to become a national officer for the organization. We shall see.